In spite of improvements in oral health, there will always be a significant number of people who lose all their teeth. Furthermore, as people are living longer, complete denture work has become more challenging and managing the transition from a pre-edentulous to an edentulous condition has become more critical.

The fourth edition of this established textbook for dental undergraduates and postgraduates has been completely updated to reflect these changes. More emphasis has been placed on care of the elderly and how to achieve better communication between clinicians and dental technicians. More details of clinical techniques have been included, with a new section on the self assessment of clinical work. The text has been completely revised to take into account the results of research over the last ten years.